Hi Virtuali, I am pasting here a copy of the question that I posed on the AVSIM forum, about how to re-activate all my licensed addons after a motherboard crash, since I could not locate a new motherboard of the same type as the one that stopped working. I own Cloud9 LAX, and FSDT Zurich, O'Hare and JKF, all of which I assume I will now need to re-validate. Could you please advise me on how to accomplish this re-validation process ? Below are the details of what took place here.
I do apologize if this topic has been handled back in the mists of time, and I did carry out brief search in the archives before deciding to go ahead and ask my question in a new post.
My FS9 computer's motherboard, a Gigabyte P.Ga-P35-DS3L stoped working a couple of weeks back without warning. When the diagnosis came in I wasn't really worried because I had made a complete backup of my FS9 hard-drive contents, on a separate drive that was left UN-connected so as to avert damage to that backup drive in the event of a system breakdown.
The computer repairman who helps keep my system running was unable to find the exact same model as the motherboard that went bad, so he purchased a Gigabyte EP41-UD3L motherboard as a replacement. Next he tried the REPAIR procedure on my registered copy of the Vista OS, but was informed by a system message that a NEW Vista install would be needed, as opposed to the Vista "repair" approach that he found would not work.
At one point the computer guy installed Windows7 on the new hard drive, followed by a re-install of FS9. Right off an "invalid license" message from PMDG prevented FS9 from even starting up. Oddly enough, installing an un-opened CD copy of the LevelD767 removed that error message from PMDG, and enabled FS9 to start up. But then, when I looked into the scenery and aircraft addon listings inside FS9, NONE of my extensive scenery and aircraft addons were visible or accessible in FS9.
Over the years I have purchased and enjoyed flying the entire PMDG Boeing fleet, the PMDG MD11, the LevelD767, the Feelthere Embraer fleet, the Dreamfleet 727 and the Leonardo Maddog 80. Also before this disaster, my FS9 scenery list included many titles by UK2000, Fly Tampa, Aerosoft, FSDT/Cloud9, SimWings and Megascenery. With my computer still not yet set up right for FS9 use, I have now lost access to ALL of these addon aircraft and scenery products, many of which took HOURS to download from the net.
As I speak, the computer tech is attempting to re-install my licensed Vista OS unto a NEW hard drive, after which he intends to try and move the Windows Game Folder, which contains FS9, along with all my previously registered addon scenery and aircraft, from my original, evidently undamaged drive from the old system, to the new drive.
With the nightmare scenario of me ultimately having to re-install and re-register ALL my addon scenery and aircraft looming larger with every failed fix here, I would like to seek your learned opinions as to whether the corrective steps I have described above will allow me to once again use all my addon FS9 scenery when complete, or if, despite my precaution of backing up all my FS9-related files unto a physically separate drive, I will have to contact each addon vendor to commence that time-comsuming re-install and validation process all over again.
Any answers that could set me on the right path would be greatly appreciated, folks. As it stands now I am effectively locked out from all the enhancements that made FS9 so magical for me, and becoming more depressed with each new corrective action that fails to reverse this situation. Apologies for the long-winded write up, but I felt that I needed to explain precisely what has been done so far, in the hopes someone on this forum might see a quick , no-hassle solution to it all.